Exposure of skin to ultraviolet (or ionizing) radiation damages DNA, which if unrepaired or improperly repaired, can lead to carcinogenesis as well as contribute to acceleration of the aging process. DNA damage and consequent genomic instability are defining characteristics of both carcinogenesis and biological aging. Patients with defective DNA repair capabilities in diseases like xeroderma pigmentosa display premature skin aging and a very high incidence of skin cancers (Robbins and Moshell, J. Inv. Dermatol., 73:102-107, 1979) on sun-exposed areas of the skin. Pharmacological intervention in damage to skin due to solar or ultraviolet radiation has heretofore been largely restricted to agents like sunscreens or free-radical scavengers intended to prevent damage, or agents like retinoic acid or glycolic acid which are intended to remodel the surface of radiation-damaged skin without necessarily addressing the most fundamental mechanisms of cell or tissue damage and repair at the level of genomic integrity.
In practice, preventive measures like sunscreen use are not completely effective, and exposure to sunlight is not always anticipated. The incidence of skin cancers in the United States approaches 1,000,000 cases per year. Therefore, there exists a need for a therapeutic agent which will reduce the risk of development of skin cancer or other consequences of skin photodamage even when applied after exposure to sunlight has already occurred. Sunscreens and agents which induce or improve tanning are not useful in such situations, since they are only useful if applied prior to exposure to UV radiation. Moreover, there are situations wherein sunscreens and even endogenous melanin can actually enhance UV-induced DNA damage through photodynamic sensitization.
There have been several attempts to improve or accelerate DNA repair and to reduce the consequences of DNA damage in skin cells after damage has already occurred. The first major step in DNA repair is detection and excision of damaged portions of DNA. The viral enzyme T4 endonuclease V can accomplish this step with some forms of DNA damage. T4 endonuclease V, when packaged in epidermis-penetrating liposomes, has been shown to accelerate the rate of excision of pyrimidine dimers, the most common form of photolesion, in photodamaged skin of mice in vivo (Yarosh et al., Cancer Res. 52:4227-31, 1992). A bacterial extract has been reported to increase the rate of unscheduled DNA synthesis, which is often used as an index of DNA repair activity (Kludas and Heise, U.S. Pat. No. 4,464,362), in UV-exposed skin; however, this effect was not confirmed in a subsequent study (Natarajan et al., Mutation Research 206:47-54, 1988).
The key issue in DNA repair, however, is not necessarily the rate of lesion excision, but the fidelity of repair. Agents which accelerate the excision step of DNA repair can actually exacerbate damage of the cells are incapable of accurate repair synthesis at a rate that matches the rate of excision of damaged segments of DNA (Collins and Johnson, J. Cell Physiol. 99:125-137, 1979).
Deoxyribonucleosides or deoxyribonucleotides have been added to cells in culture with variable or divergent effects on DNA damage or mutagenesis in response to irradiation of the cells. In some cell types, e.g. lymphocytes, which have limited capabilities for de novo deoxyribonucleotide synthesis, exogenous deoxynucleosides are reported to improve cell survival after exposure to UV radiation (Yew and Johnson, Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 562:240-251, 1979; Green et al., Mutation Research, 350:239-246, 1996) or ionizing radiation (Petrovic et al., Int. J. Radiat. Biol., 18:243. 1970); no significant improvement in survival was seen after addition of deoxyribonucleosides to UV-irradiated normal human fibroblasts (Green et al., Mutation Research, 350:239-246, 1996). A crucial point is that increasing cell survival after genomic damage caused by UV radiation or other mutagens is not necessarily desirable. The process of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is integrated with cellular mechanisms for detecting DNA damage. Thus, genomic damage which by itself is not sufficient to cause cell death, can trigger apoptosis, an active cellular suicide process, so that the DNA damage in the cell is not perpetuated in subsequent cell generations, with tumorigenesis as a possible outcome as genomic damage accumulates. The mechanisms for detecting genomic damage and inducing apoptosis involve cell-cycle regulating proteins such as the tumor-suppressor protein p53. Therefore, agents which promote cell survival (e.g. by inhibiting apoptosis) after irradiation are not necessarily anticarcinogenic, and may actually enhance mutation frequency and risk of malignant transformation by permitting survival of damaged cells that would otherwise be eliminated by apoptosis. A significant illustration of this principle is the demonstration that embryonic p53 knockout mice exposed to ionizing radiation in utero have a higher survival rate (live birth) than wild-type controls, but also have a much higher frequency of congenital defects (Norimura et al., Nature Medicine, 2:577-580).
In studies where the effect of exogenous deoxyribonucleosides on mutation frequency in UV-irradiated cells has been explicitly studied, variable results have been obtained. Bianchi and Celotti (Mutation Research 146:277-284, 1985) reported that thymidine or deoxycytidine at high concentrations increased the mutation frequency in UV-irradiated V79 Chinese hamster cells; no reduction in mutation frequency was observed at any concentrations of added nucleosides. Musk et al. (Mutation Research 227:25-30, 1989) reported that a mixture of deoxyribonucleosides which included excess deoxycytidine relative to the other nucleosides, reduced the mutation frequency in response to UV-C (254 nm) irradiation to MM96L melanoma cells, a cell line with a known constitutive excess of purine deoxyribonucleotides. In the same study, exogenous deoxyribonucleosides had no effect on mutation frequency in another neoplastic cell line, human HeLa cells, after exposure to UV-C radiation. It is important to note that UV-C radiation is not a component of solar radiation at the surface of the earth, since it is blocked effectively by the atmosphere (Pathak, 1974, in Sunlight and Man, ed. by T. B. Fitzpatrick, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, Japan, p. 815). The effect of deoxyribonucleosides on mutation frequency in cells exposed to solar radiation or UV radiation at wavelengths that are present in solar radiation was not tested, and the authors explicitly conclude their discussion with the statement “ . . . the lower [mutation] frequency in sun-[irradiated] compared with UVC-irradiated MM96L cells suggests that sunlight either does not perturb the deoxynucleoside pools or it induces a cellular response that is insensitive to nucleoside levels.”
In addition to agents which inhibit apoptosis or improve DNA repair sufficiently to permit cell survival but not necessarily for correction of potentially tumorigenic mutations, growth factors in general (including those that are involved in normal wound healing responses like TGF-β or PDGF) act as tumor promoters.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,708 discloses the methods and compositions involving the use of mixtures of deoxyribonucleosides for promotion of the healing of wounds, ulcers, and burns, including those caused by ultraviolet or solar radiation.
Acyl derivatives of deoxyribonucleosides have been taught as delivery molecules for promoting entry of deoxyribonucleosides into the skin, as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 466,379. It is disclosed that acyl derivatives of deoxyribonucleosides can improve cellular repair and cell survival after damage to skin caused by radiation.
Oligodeoxyribonucleotides have been proposed as melanogenic stimuli, based on the idea that DNA damage, or excision products of DNA damage, might be cellular signals for increasing melanin production in the skin to help protect against subsequent damage. Gilchrest et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,470,577; WO Application Serial No. 95/01773) proposed that exogenous DNA photodamage products may stimulate melanogenesis without actual damage to cellular DNA as a necessary intermediate step. The stated intention was to mimic the presence of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers or other DNA photodamage products in order to provide the cell with false DNA damage signals that might trigger induction of melanogenesis in the absence of actual DNA damage. Treatment of melanoma cells in vitro and guinea pig skin in vivo with thymidine dinucleotide resulted in increases in melanin production. The authors stated that they believed that DNA fragments entered the cells, and even their nuclei, intact. They proposed that sunless tanning accomplished over a period of weeks by topical administration of oligodeoxyribonucleotides, especially thymidine dinucleotide, could protect skin by inducing melanin synthesis, with consequent reduction of passage of UV radiation into and through the skin.
Wiskemann (1974; in Sunlight and Man, ed. by T. B. Fizpatrick, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, Japan, p. 51) reported that systemic (intraperitoneal) administration the deoxyribonucleoside thymidine or the ribonucleosides and congeners adenosine, cyclic-AMP, uridine, cytidine increased the period of latency for extravasation of systemically administered Evan's Blue dye in the skin in the first few hours after UV exposure, indicating a reduction in acute UV-induced edema. In this system, DNA administered after irradiation had no effect on extravasation of dye. The author also explicitly states that nucleobases incorporated into ointments do not penetrate the horny layer (the stratum corneum, the outer layer of enucleated keratinocytes comprising the main moisture barrier of skin) of human epidermis.